UN joins One Day on Earth to capture global spectrum of human activities on film

The United Nations is partnering with the One Day on Earth project to film human activities across the world today to be edited into a video narrative highlighting such issues of global concern as poverty, gender equality, the environment, human rights and governance.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) will provide logistical support for the event, which will bring together filmmakers, students, humanitarian workers, and others to film stories that reflect UNDP’s new tagline Empowered Lives – Resilient Nations.

“The films will be used to tell the story of how we empower lives and make nations resilient around the world,” Boaz Paldi, the head of UNDP’s video department, told the UN News Centre.

“It is a huge opportunity to put a human face on what we do – we deal with long-term development and that has a significant impact on people’s lives.”

Footage will be shot in 120 countries – up from over 90 last year – where UNDP has projects and activities. In New York, where UNDP has its headquarters, the agency’s Administrator, Helen Clark, will visit a bakery project in the Harlem neighbourhood for immigrant women to acquire skills and learn English.

Last year’s collaborative effort between UNDP and One Day on Earth resulted in an eight-minute film highlighting UNDP’s development work in poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery and energy and environmental protection.

A future-length documentary from this year’s footage will be released early in 2012 and will, also with UN support, be screened in countries across the world on a single day.

The One Day on Earth project was founded in 2008 as a new media project to create a unique video time capsule, global online community and feature length film from participant footage, which was captured during the 24-hour period of 10 October last year.